I uploaded some quick shots of one of my drawing electives this quarter.

table sander

At first I was in agony over which classes to take this quarter, in particular how to spend 4 hours every Tuesday afternoon: “Drawing the Human Figure” or “Basic Colour Skills.” Koos warned me the former was the most difficult drawing class offered, but basic color sounds like it could be… well, lamer.

The system here is that you have to attend the first lecture to get into the class. Both being at the same time and worth the same amount of ECTS, the ten minutes before the first class I was running back and forth between drawing rooms, trying to decide which class to take based on who else was taking it. Human figure has favorite people from Multisensory! Basic color looks… unfamiliar and sedated.

Eventually I found the teachers, also making it difficult. Human figure was taught by some guy who wore a purple sweatervest. Basic color was taught by Koos Eissen, who is if you remember, my drawing nerd crush.

So at this point, it’s even. And it ends up that both classes are traditional classes in disguise. Human figure was just normal models and charcoal (charted territory, but interesting subject). Basic color was of products and watercolor (boring subject, but new media).

But just one look at the watercolor examples decided everything for me. And I’m really glad I did it. My drawings are nowhere near the quality of anyone else, but for once I think I improved a little bit during the period of the class. I’ve never used watercolor before as a serious medium. They were just in those cheap kits for kids, with the crappy, brightly-colored plastic handle brush with black, synthetic bristles.

And actually, today I got my drawings back from Koos, who gave me a passing mark for the class AND said “They were nice.”

*swoon*

It ends up I had purple sweatervest guy for my other drawing elective, of which I will write at a later time.

I went this past weekend to Dublin, a city I expected to look… less new. Somehow, I’ve been spoiled a bit by living in the quaint town of Delft that magically stores nerdy tech students infinitely in its canals (or perhaps in the wind).

The first day I got there before my companions, so I decided on a day trip to Howth, pronounced more like “Hoath,” to walk around the peninsula. I was surprised by the public prevalence of written Gaelic, and then while on the train ride to Hoath I realized it didn’t matter whether which language local young teenage girls spoke, because I couldn’t understand anything with their accents.

Near the beginning of my journey around the peninsula (my free map from a coffee shop makes it look very Lord of the Rings), fate brought me to a fellow lone traveler from Germany named Oda, who was stood up last second by her friend for her birthday trip to Dublin.

We happily trekked along the surprisingly empty, surprisingly steep, surprisingly narrow path for the first hour or two… and a bit more tired for the remaining couple hours getting back to the train station.

For the rest of the weekend we hit up the touristy stuff, but also stopped by a small design market on Saturday that was a bit eclectic. I bought a necklace from Aoife, who is on a mission to bring bone-carving back to its Irish roots (who knew it started there?). Apparently the butcher starts gathering bones when he sees her coming. Nice.

Other favorites from the trip:

more decently priced and locally brewed beer at Messrs. Maguire

food from the Hairy Lemon

old school Guinness advertisements illustrated by John Gilroy

And one surprising thing I found was that I missed the size of Dutch beers. Half a liter of beer is just too much for me if I want to do anything other than sit down and be lazy. Really lazy.